Introduction to the Specialization

Course video 1 of 23

Welcome! This first week will give you a bit of background on the specialization and help set you up to make the most of your experience doing Finance for Everyone: Decisions. You will also engage with introductory concepts about finance, communicate with your fellow learners, and familiarize yourself with the course culminating project.

Finance for Everyone: Decisions will introduce you to the workings of the free markets and the foundations of finance. You will learn how free markets and their “creative destruction” provide the architecture for the global economy and how those same markets move money in ways that create and destroy wealth. Your financial toolkit will include timeless concepts like compounding, discounting, annuities, effective interest rates, and more. You will also learn how to simplify important financial calculations and apply that knowledge to real-life decisions that can influence everything from how you pay for your car to where you live. Through peer review you will publish your view on an issue important to you. You will also discover how your applied decisions connect to bigger questions relating to changing market conditions as you prepare for the second course in F4E: Markets.